Cleanup underway in Beaufort after Dorian sweeps through

BEAUFORT COUNTY, S.C. (WTOC) - Hurricane Dorian may have passed through the Lowcountry and the Coastal Empire, but many people are left with a big mess to clean up.

Besides a little debris and a few downed trees, many people WTOC spoke to say they really didn’t have much damage. One man said he didn’t evacuate, and he’s just glad things weren’t any worse.

“A tree happened to fall on the house, but luckily, we weren’t there," Alfonso Andrede said.

Andrede is just one of many people left with a big mess after Dorian swept through the Lowcountry. A tree fell on his house in Bluffton during the storm, damaging a piece of it that had also been damaged in previous storms.

Tree services were out at his house on Friday.

“I really thought it was going to come because everybody was evacuating, but I thought I would wait it out this time, and luckily, I made the right choice," he said.

Andrede said he did not evacuate, but in the future, he might think twice for his safety.

“Whatever happens, happens. We can rebuild, but lives are more important.”

Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner says “lucky” is the best word to use when it comes to the damage the hurricane could have left behind. He says this was one of the most unpredictable storms he’s seen in years.

Sheriff Tanner, along with several other county officials, says the biggest thing they had a problem with was power outages. Nearly 22,000 residents were without power. The sheriff says one thing they are proud of is the lack of crime that happened during the storm. He says they had three residential burglaries and three car break-ins. He credits the cooperation and the mandatory curfew that was put into place.

“We have a huge storm that’s very dangerous staring at our coastline, and if you were watching the storm day by day, hour by hour like we were, it looked for a period of time that we were going to be in pretty bad shape as that storm continued to travel northwest and started picking up steam. We were still in the radar,” Sheriff Tanner said.

No injuries were reported and no arrests were made for curfew violation.

WTOC drove all around Beaufort County Friday. Many businesses are starting to open, but a lot are also still boarded up.

The mandatory curfews have been lifted, so residents can now freely move around the county.